On Your Side

The craziness continues back my beloved home state. Here in the Twin Cities we've been treated to rather a lot of advertising concerning the recall election for the Wisconsin state senate district just across the St. Croix. The incumbent is a Republican, Sheila Harsdorf, while the challenger is a teacher/union activist named Shelley Moore.

I'm on record as saying that I want all the recalls to fail, on both sides, mostly because I think it would be better for the state if the politics calmed down a smidge.

I'm beginning to have second thoughts about it, though. There's been an amazing amount of thuggishness going on in Wisconsin and nearly all of it has come from the Democrats and their allies. And even though the thuggishness has largely failed, it continues:

A spokesman for the Wisconsin Democratic Party has threatened to sic union bullies on an independent news organization whose reporting he thinks is "biased."

Graeme Zeilinski was upset that a WisconsinReporter.com reporter noted in an interview with the Heritage Foundation think thank that Wisconsin had, according to U.S. Department of Labor data, created nearly half of all the new jobs created across the country in June.

I suppose that Zeilinski would be upset to read such a thing, since it tends to undercut the arguments he and his allies have been making ever since Scott Walker's inauguration. I would expect that, as a party spokesman, he would have countervailing evidence at the ready and that he would share that with WisconsinReporter.com.

Instead, Zeilinski is sharing the love:

In an email titled "What Happens Next," Zeilinski warned WisconsinReporter.com that:



“What happens next is that I contact the publishers and editors of the papers that publish you as ‘unbiased,’ and let them know our deep concern about the obvious bias that permeates your entire operation,” Zielinski states in his email.


“Then, we let our activists know which papers publish you, and they write the publisher and editor. Then, we contact the Capitol press pool and let them know about our concerns about your credentialing. And we continue on until you actually admit to the truth of your operation.”

I'll give Zeilinski this -- he's quite open about being a thug.

One of the arguments we've heard on the ads supporting Shelley Moore is that Harsdorf, as a Republican, is no longer "on our side." Zeilinski supports Moore, of course. Riddle me this -- do you want to be on Zeilinski's side?